The irony is obvious. The better Theo Fleury plays, the more goals he scores, the more valuable he is to the Rangers, the easier it becomes to wheel the expensive 32-year-old winger out of New York.

And isn’t this exactly what Glen Sather has been hoping for ever since he took command of the Blueshirts in July; for his big names to play well enough to attract interest elsewhere? Isn’t this the one way the GM can clear some room on the payroll and on the roster for younger legs?

Whatever the big picture, the, uh, small picture last night featured Fleury flying up and down the Garden ice, sticking his nose in, keeping his feet moving and the goals right on coming. For the winger, who scored all of 15 times a year ago, pumped up his total to nine in this year’s opening 11 games by scoring the first hat trick as a Ranger to pace his team’s 6-1 rout of the Lightning.

It’s nine goals and seven assists for Fleury in his last nine games; four goals and two assists in two games while skating on the left side with Tim Taylor and Sandy McCarthy, each of whom last night scored for the first time this season.

“I wanted to come back this year and prove once again that I can still play and do the things I have always done,” said Fleury, whose hat trick was the 15th of his career. “All the things that happened before, I just chalk up to whatever. I came to camp this year with my skating legs, ready to play.

“To me, with everything that’s happened, it’s how you rebound that makes the difference.”

After losing four straight, after suffering a Rye locker-room Sather tirade, the Rangers have rebounded from four straight losses in which they were outscored 16-7 to win two in a row by a combined 11-2. They thus step up in class for tonight’s match in Ottawa somewhat stabilized, and with a 5-6 record. They also, because Low was pretty much rotating four lines throughout and because the score had mounted to the final 6-1 before five minutes had been played in the third, will be reasonably well rested for the 7-1-3 Senators.

“If it goes on like this I can play 10 more years,” said Mark Messier, who registered a pair of assists in 15:10 of ice, the least he’s played thus far this year.

Fleury got two on the power play and then completed his night by adding a short-hander for the second straight game as the Rangers increased their season-long scoring edge on the specialty teams to 19-9. Really, despite coming out of the first period scoreless, the Blueshirts played their most complete match of the season, producing even-strength chances both off the rush and, for the first time, off the down-low game.

Mike Richter was outstanding last night, but Low won’t yield to temptation and come right back tonight with the goaltender. Still under orders not to go back-to-back, Richter won’t even dress for the match. Johan Holmqvist, who may well get the starting assignment, will make the trip along with Kirk McLean.

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John MacLean, written off by Sather as a Ranger, will make the trip, too. But this situation is going to get nasty. Sather last night said that he had rejected a buy-out offer from MacLean’s agent yesterday – assume it came very close to 100 percent of the $2.5 million on his contract – and implied that if MacLean would not accept a discounted buyout, the GM would have no choice but to send him to the minors, and not necessarily to Hartford.

The threat is clear. Accept less than full dollar after being publicly shredded or run the risk of being sent away to an independent IHL operation far away from where he and his family live in New Jersey. One can now infer that Sather’s attack on MacLean was designed to infuriate the veteran winger into asking out – at Sather’s price. Guess what? There’s no chance of that. Sather misread MacLean’s personality.